LXXXIII.

Se c'è armadura o cosa che tu voglia, Vattene in zambra e pigliane tu stessi, E cuopri a questo gigante le scoglia. Rispose Orlando: se armadura avessi Prima che noi uscissim de la soglia, Che questo mio compagno difendessi: Questo accetto io, e sarammi piacere. Disse l'abate: venite a vedere.

LXXXIV.

E in certa cameretta entrati sono,
Che d'armadure vecchie era copiosa;
Dice l'abate: tutte ve le dono,
Morgante va rovistando ogni cosa;
Ma solo un certo sbergo gli fu buono,
Ch' avea tutta la maglia rugginosa :
Maravigliossi che lo cuopra appunto :
Che mai più gnun forse glien' era aggiunto.
LXXXV.

Questo fu d'un gigante smisurata,

Ch'a la badía fu morto per antico
Dal gran Milon d'Angrante, ch' arrivato;
V' era, s'appunto questa istoria dico;
Ed era ne le mura istoriato,

Come e' fu morto questo gran nimico,
Che fece a la badía già lunga guerra:
E Milon v'è com' e' l'abbatte in terra.
LXXXVI.

Veggendo questa istoria il conte Orlando,
Fra suo cor disse: o Dio, che sai sol tutto,
Come venne Milon quì capitando,
Che ha questo gigante quì distrutto?
E lesse certe lettre lacrimando,
Che non potè tenir piu il viso asciutto,
Com'io dirò ne la seguente istoria :
Di mal vi guardi il Re de l'alta gloria.

CAMPBELL.

DEDICATION.

LADY! if for the cold and cloudy clime
Where I was born, but where I would not die,
Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy

I dare to build the imitative rhyme,

Harsh Runic copy of the South's sublime,
THOU art the cause; and howsoever I
Fall short of his immortal harmony,

Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.

Ravenna. Dante's tomb, the classical pine wood, the relics of antiquity which are to be found in that place, afforded a sufficient pretext for me to invite him to come, and for him to accept my invitation. He came in the month of June, 1819, arriving at Ravenna on the day of the festival of the Corpus Domini. Being deprived at this time of his books, his horses, and all that occupied him at Venice, I begged him to gratify me by writing something on the subject of Dante; and, with his usual facility and rapidity, he composed his Prophecy."]

[*"Twas in a grove of spreading pines he strayed," &c. DRYDEN'S Theodore and Honoria]

PREFACE.

In the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna in the summer of 1819, it was suggested to the author that having composed something on the subject of Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on Dante's exile, -the tomb of the poet forming one of the principal objects of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger.

"On this hint I spake," and the result has been the following four cantos, in terza rima, now offered to the reader. If they are understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in various other cantos, to its natural conclusion in the present age. The reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval between the conclusion of the Divina Commedia and his death, and shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my mind the Cassandra of Lycophron, and the Prophecy of Nereus by Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is the terza rima of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto tried in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley, of whose translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to Caliph Vathek; so that-if I do not err-this poem may be considered as a metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of those of the poet, whose name I have borrowed, and most probably taken in vain.

Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is difficult for any who have a name, good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of Childe Harold translated into Italian versi sciolti,- that is, a poem written in the Spenserean stanza into blank verse, without regard to the natural divisions of the stanza or of the sense. If the present poem, being on a national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request the Italian reader to remember that when I have failed in the imitation of his great "Padre Alighier," I have failed in imitating that which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet settled what was the meaning of the allegory in the first canto of the Inferno, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable conjecture may be considered as having decided the question.

He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them

1 [Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in May, 1265, of an ancient and honourable family. In the early part of his life he gained some credit in a military character, and distinguished himself by his bravery in an action where the Florentines obtained a signal victory over the citizens of Arezzo. He became still more eminent by the acquisition of court honours; and at the age of thirty-five he rose to be one of the chief magistrates of Florence, when that dignity was conferred by the suffrages of the people. From this exaltation the poet himself dated his principal misfortunes. Italy was at that time distracted by the contending factions of the Ghibelines and Guelphs, among the latter Dante took an active part. In one of the proscriptions he was banished, his possessions confiscated, and he died in exile in 1321. Boccaccio thus describes his person and manners:-" He was of the middle stature, of a mild disposition, and, from the time he arrived at manhood, grave in his manner and deportment. His clothes were plain, and his dress always conformable to his years: his face was long; his nose aquiline; his eyes rather large than otherwise. His complexion was dark, melancholy, and pensive. In his meals he was extremely moderate; in his

as a nation-their literature; and in the present bitterness of the classic and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a translation of Monti, or Pindemonte, or Arici, should be held up to the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader, when my business is with the English one; and be they few or many, I must take my leave of both.

The Prophecy of Dante.'

CANTO THE FIRST.

ONCE more in man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 't was forgotten; and I feel
The weight of clay again, too soon bereft
Of the immortal vision which could heal

My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies
Lift me from that deep gulf without repeal,
Where late my ears rung with the damned cries
Of souls in hopeless bale; and from that place
Of lesser torment, whence men may arise
Pure from the fire to join the angelic race;
Midst whom my own bright Beatrice 2 bless'd
My spirit with her light; and to the base
Of the eternal Triad! first, last, best,

Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God!
Soul universal! led the mortal guest,
Unblasted by the glory, though he trod

From star to star to reach the almighty throne.
Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod
So long hath press'd, and the cold marble stone,
Thou sole pure seraph of my earliest love,
Love so ineffable, and so alone,

That nought on earth could more my bosom move,
And meeting thee in heaven was but to meet
That without which my soul, like the arkless dove,
Had wander'd still in search of, nor her feet

Relieved her wing till found; without thy light
My paradise had still been incomplete. 3
Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight

Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought,
Loved ere I knew the name of love 4, and bright

Così se guardi fiso

Pensar ben déi ch' ogni terren' placere." Canzone, in which Dante describes the person of Beatrice, Strophe third.

4 [According to Boccaccio, Dante was a lover long before he was a soldier, and his passion for the Beatrice whom he has immortalised commenced while he was in his ninth year, and she in her eighth year. It is said that their first meeting was at a banquet in the house of Folco Portinaro, her father; and certain it is, that the impression then made on the susceptible and constant heart of Dante was not obliterated by her death, which happened after an interval of sixteen years. - CARY.]

K k

Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought
With the world's war, and years, and banishment,
And tears for thee, by other woes untaught;
For mine is not a nature to be bent

By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd, And though the long, long conflict hath been spent In vain, and never more, save when the cloud

Which overhangs the Apennine, my mind's eye Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud Of me, can I return, though but to die,

Unto my native soil, they have not yet Quench'd the old exile's spirit, stern and high. But the sun, though not overcast, must set,

And the night cometh; I am old in days, And deeds, and contemplation, and have met Destruction face to face in all his ways.

The world hath left me, what it found me, pure, And if I have not gather'd yet its praise,

I sought it not by any baser lure;

Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name
May form a monument not all obscure,
Though such was not my ambition's end or aim,
To add to the vain-glorious list of those
Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,

And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows
Their sail, and deem it glory to be class'd
With conquerors, and virtue's other foes,

In bloody chronicles of ages past.

I would have had my Florence great and free: 1 Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He Wept over, "but thou wouldst not; " as the bird Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard

My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherish'd thee was stirr'd Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce, And doom this body forfeit to the fire. Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire, But did not merit to expire by her,

And loves her, loves her even in her ire. The day may come when she will cease to err, The day may come she would be proud to have The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer 2 Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave. But this shall not be granted; let my dust Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust

Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume My indignant bones, because her angry gust Forsooth is over, and repeal'd her doom;

2 "Ut si quis predictorum ullo tempore in fortiam dicti communis pervenerit, talis perveniens igne comburatur, sic quod moriatur." Second sentence of Florence against Dante, and the fourteen accused with him. The Latin is worthy of the sentence. [On the 27th of January, 1302, Dante was mulcted eight thousand lire, and condemned to two years' banishment; and in case the fine was not paid, his goods were to be confiscated. On the eleventh of March, the same year, he was sentenced to a punishment due only to the most desperate of malefactors. The decree, that he and his associates in exile should be burned, if they fell into the hands of their enemies, was first discovered, in 1772, by the Conte Ludovico

No, -she denied me what was mine-my roof, And shall not have what is not hers-my tomb. Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof

The breast which would have bled for her, the heart
That beat, the mind that was temptation proof,
The man who fought, toil'd, travell'd, and each part
Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw
For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art
Pass his destruction even into a law.

These things are not made for forgetfulness,
Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw
The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress
Of such endurance too prolong'd to make
My pardon greater, her injustice less,
Though late repented; yet-yet for her sake
I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine,
My own Beatrice, I would hardly take
Vengeance upon the land which once was mine,
And still is hallow'd by thy dust's return,
Which would protect the murderess like a shrine,
And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.

Though, like old Marius 3 from Minturnæ's marsh
And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn
At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,

And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch My brow with hopes of triumph, let them go Such are the last infirmities of those Who long have suffer'd more than mortal woe, And yet being mortal still, have no repose But on the pillow of Revenge Revenge, Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change, When we shall mount again, and they that trod Be trampled on, while Death and Até range O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks- -Great God! Take these thoughts from me-to thy hands I yield My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod Will fall on those who smote me,

-be my shield! As thou hast been in peril, and in pain, In turbulent cities, and the tented fieldIn toil, and many troubles borne in vain

For Florence. 4- I appeal from her to Thee! Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign, Even in that glorious vision, which to see

And live was never granted until now, And yet thou hast permitted this to me. Alas! with what a weight upon my brow

The sense of earth and earthly things come back, Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low, The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack, Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect

Savioli. See Tiraboschi, where the sentence is given at length.]

3 [Under the pretence of opposing the power of Sylla, Marius, who had been five times elected to the consulship, aimed at the sovereign power. Stapylton says, that the Minturnian fens, in which he was discovered by Sylla's emissaries, were in Switzerland! For this accurate piece of topography, he was indebted to the old scholiast. The spot, however, lies on the right hand of the ferry of Garigliano, as you go from Rome to Naples.- GIFFORD.]

4 [In one so highly endowed by nature, and so consummate by instruction, we may well sympathise with a resentment which exile and poverty rendered perpetually fresh. But the heart of Dante was naturally sensible, and even tender : his poetry is full of comparisons from rural life; and the sincerity of his early passion for Beatrice pierces through the veil of allegory that surrounds her. But the memory of his injuries pursued him into the immensity of eternal light; and in the company of saints and angels, his unforgiving spirit darkens at the name of Florence. HALLAM.]

Of half a century bloody and black, And the frail few years I may yet expect

Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear, For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd On the lone rock of desolate Despair,

To lift my eyes more to the passing sail
Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;
Nor raise my voice-for who would heed my wail?
I am not of this people, nor this age,
And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
Which shall preserve these times when not a page
Of their perturbed annals could attract

An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,
Did not my verse embalm full many an act

Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd

In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have
known

The name of him- who now is but a name,
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his- by him unheard, unheeded—fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus - to tame

My mind down from its own infinity

To live in narrow ways with little men, A common sight to every common eye, A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den, Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things That make communion sweet, and soften pain To feel me in the solitude of kings

Without the power that makes them bear a crownTo envy every dove his nest and wings Which waft him where the Apennine looks down On Arno, till he perches, it may be, Within my all inexorable town,

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,1

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought Destruction for a dowry 2- this to see And feel, and know without repair, hath taught A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free: I have not vilely found, nor basely sought, They made an Exile - not a slave of me.

1 This lady, whose name was Gemma, sprung from one of the most powerful Guelf families, named Donati. Corso Donati was the principal adversary of the Ghibellines. She is described as being "Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus," according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalised with Boccace, in his life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. "Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le mogli esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate il più nobile filosofo che mai fosse, ebbe moglie e figliuoli e uffici della Repubblica nella sua Città; e Aristotele che, &c. &c. ebbe due mogli in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze assai.-E Marco Tullio -e Catone-e Varrone,

e Seneca ebbero moglie," &c. &c. It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for any thing I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands' happiness, whatever they might

Forth from the abyss of time which is to be, The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great Seers of Israel wore within, That spirit was on them, and is on me, And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
The only guerdon I have ever known.
Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,
Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown

With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one country, and even yet

Thou'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide West
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which express'd
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan Bard, the banish'd Ghibelline. Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries Is rent, a thousand years which yet supine Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise, Heaving in dark and sullen undulation, Float from eternity into these eyes; The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their staThe unborn earthquake yet is in the womb, The bloody chaos yet expects creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The elements await but for the word, "Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword, Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,

[tion,

Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored: Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice? Thou, Italy whose ever golden fields, Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven gilds With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue; Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,

And form'd the Eternal City's ornaments From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew ; Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

as to their philosophy-Cato gave away his wife. - of Varro's we know nothing—and of Seneca's only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered, and lived several years afterwards. But, says Lionardo, "L'uomo è animale civile, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi." And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the animal's civism is “la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la Città.”

2 [The violence of Gemma's temper proved a source of the bitterest suffering to Dante; and in that passage of the Inferno, where one of the characters says

'La fiera moglie più ch' altro, mi nuoce,
-'me, my wife,

Of savage temper, more than aught beside,
Hath to this evil brought,'

his own conjugal unhappiness must have recurred forcibly and painfully to his mind. - CARY.]

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints, And finds her prior vision but portray'd

In feeble colours, when the eye- from the Alp Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp

Nods to the storm dilates and dotes o'er thee, And wistfully implores, as 't were, for help To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still

The more approach'd, and dearest were they free,
Thou thou must wither to each tyrant's will:
The Goth hath been,- the German, Frank, and Hun
Are yet to come, and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water

Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;

But those, the human savages, explore

All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.

Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set; 1
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met,
Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;

Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance
Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate.
Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France,

From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance But Tiber shall become a mournful river.

Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po, Crush them, ye rocks! floods whelm them, and for Why sleep the idle avalanches so,

To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?
Why doth Eridanus but overflow

[ever!

why,

The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?
Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?
Over Cambyses' host the desert spread
Her sandy ocean, and the sea waves' sway
Roll'd over Pharaoh and his thousands, -
Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?
And you, ye men! Romans, who dare not die,
Sons of the conquerors who overthrew
Those who o'erthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,

Are the Alps weaker than Thermopyla ?
Their passes more alluring to the view
Of an invader? is it they, or ye,

That to each host the mountain-gate unbar, And leave the march in peace, the passage free? Why, Nature's self detains the victor's car,

1 See "Sacco di Roma," generally attributed to Guicciardini. There is another written by a Jacopo Buonaparte. [The original MS. of the latter work is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris. It is entitled, "Ragguaglio Storico di tutto l' occorso, giorno per giorno, nel Sacco di Roma dell anno

Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting Is more secure than walls of adamant, when The hearts of those within are quivering.

Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to Against Oppression; but how vain the toil, [bring

While still Division sows the seeds of woe And weakness, till the stranger reaps the spoil. Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low, So long the grave of thy own children's hopes, When there is but required a single blow To break the chain, yet - yet the Avenger stops,

And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee, And join their strength to that which with thee What is there wanting then to set thee free, [copes; And show thy beauty in its fullest light? To make the Alps impassable; and we, Her sons, may do this with one deed -Unite.

The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the Vials of wrath but emptied to refill

And flow again, I cannot all record

That crowds on my prophetic eye: the earth And ocean written o'er would not afford Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth;

Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven, There where the farthest suns and stars have birth, Spread like a banner at the gate of heaven,

The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs
Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven
Athwart the sound of archangelic songs,
And Italy, the martyr'd nation's gore,
Will not in vain arise to where belongs
Omnipotence and mercy evermore:

Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind,
The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er
The seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind.
Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of
Earth's dust by immortality refined
To sense and suffering, though the vain may scoff,
And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow
Before the storm because its breath is rough,
To thee, my country! whom before, as now,
I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre
And melancholy gift high powers allow
To read the future; and if now my fire

Is not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive!
I but foretell thy fortunes-then expire;
Think not that I would look on them and live.
A spirit forces me to see and speak,
And for my guerdon grants not to survive;
My heart shall be pour'd over thee and break:

MDXXVII, scritto da Jacopo Buonaparte, gentiluomo Samminiatese, che vi si trovò presente. An edition of it was printed at Cologne in 1756, to which is prefixed a genealogy of the Buonaparte family.]